Upcoming Events

14-18 August 2019

“Is This You?: Looking for Childhoods in the Ruth Krauss Archive.” Paper on “Voices from the archive: Excavating the silences in the history of children’s literature” panel, which includes papers from Nina Christensen, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and Nazera Wright.

1 November 2018

29 June 2018

Children’s Literature Association Conference, San Antonio, Texas

“Reading the Comments Section; or, Why Adults Refuse to Admit Racist Content in the Children’s Books They Love” (conference paper). This is part of the panel “All Necks Are on the Line: Decentering Whiteness, Memory, and Nostalgia in Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” featuring Katharine Capshaw on “Why We Love The Snowy Day: Whiteness and Historical Memory” and Althea Tait on “Risky Business: Reading African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature With an Aesthetic of Empathy.” Session 11H, 3:30 pm.

“Harry Potter and the Nazis: Myth, Text, Social Change,” Ika Willis, University of Wollongong, Australia

I had far more good abstracts than I did slots on the panel. So, apologies to all I had to turn down. (There were 36 submissions from a total of 10 countries, including the US, Norway, UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Japan, and Poland.) The panel description (below) offers the rationale for this particular configuration of ideas and experts.

Because books can encourage children to question rather than accept the world as it is, this session (sponsored by the Children’s Literature Forum) examines children’s literature as a vehicle for social change. How can we raise a new generation less susceptible to the follies that created our current predicament? To address that question, first, the panel offers historical and geographical breadth in both subject matter and country of scholars. In thinking about resistance today, we need to be thinking historically and internationally. Second, the panel covers key areas under attack by Trumpism and its various fascist affiliates: the Enlightenment project itself (Appel & Christensen, covering 18th and 19th century Denmark), the efforts to forge a multi-racial struggle against racism (Fielder, 19th century U.S.), the fight for LGBTQ rights (Matos), and the very possibility of resistance itself (Willis). Third, the order of panelists offers a roughly chronological progression through history and subject matter, concluding with Willis’s paper, not just because it questions the panel’s “Harry Potter” metaphor but also because it functions as a kind of meta-commentary on the panel itself.

10-11 November 2017

“Children of the World, Unite!: Respecting Difference and Building Community Through Books for Young People.” Paper on the panel “Against Nationalism: Children’s Literature and Pedagogies of Resistance,” which features papers by Brigitte Fielder, Lara Saguisag, and response from Mary Niall Mitchell. Fri., 10 Nov., 4:00-5:45 pm, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Skyway 260, Skyway Level East Tower.

July 21, 2016

Official description: “Before Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, and Pogo, there was Barnaby. Crockett Johnson’s classic strip combined fantasy and satire, a child’s feeling of wonder and an adult’s wariness, with highly literate jokes and a keen eye for the ridiculous. Johnson’s biographer Philip Nel is joined by Eric Reynolds, co-editor of Fantagraphics’s Barnaby series, cartoonist Jeff Smith (Bone), and moderator Thomas Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter). They’ll talk about why the strip remains so influential and its place in the history of great American comics.” Click here for other Fantagraphics panels. Click here for full program schedule.

August 6-7, 2015

As the announcement says, “In August 2015 the Children’s Literature Unit in the School of English at Newcastle University will be hosting a series of children’s literature Master Classes concentrated in two days. The classes will be led by a distinguished, international team of children’s literature scholars. The overall subject will be ‘The Future of the Subject’, with a particular focus on Archives.” The team includes me (obviously), Kim Reynolds, Kate Capshaw, Matthew Grenby, Kenneth Kidd, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Anja Müller, and others. Registration is free; lodging is not. For more details, click on the pdf. Deadline to apply is 31 May 2015.

November 24, 2013

“Laughing from the Left: Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, and the Limits of Satire as a Means of Dissent” (paper, on panel “When Does Laughter Liberate?: Humor and Dissent in 20th-Century Popular Culture,” which features papers by Juniper Ellis, Gary Richards, and a response from Lori Brooks). 8:00 am, Washington Hilton / A – Albright.

June 14, 2013

“Manifesto for a Comics-Children’s Literature Alliance” (as part of a panel titled “Taking a Risk: Manifestos for Children’s Literature,” which also features manifestos from Robin Bernstein, Marah Gubar, and Karin Westman).

Archives

A note on mp3s

Mp3s are for sampling purposes. If you like what you hear, please go and buy it. Go to the artists' concerts. Tell your friends about them. If you represent an artist or a label and would prefer that I remove a link to an mp3, please email me: philnel at gmail dot com.